Eighteen years ago, in February 1996, a community known
as The Syndicate (www.LLTS.org) was formed. In that
era, dial-up modems were still used by many people to
connect to the internet. Speeds of 1200 baud were
lightning fast. Computers that we gamed on had a small
fraction of the power of your droid or iPhone. The
colors you could display on your monitor, for most
people, were limited to 256 different colors. If you
were one of the fortunate few, you may have had a 3DFX
graphics card with a couple megabytes of RAM on it,
which was the ‘king’ of graphics back in the day.

The Syndicate community was founded with the hope,
belief and dream that players would want to come
together as a team of friends; who wanted to stick
together for years; and who would be able to work
through the challenges that often tear communities
apart. Right from the beginning, the community faced big
hurdles. Initial recruiting practices were abysmal with
an applicant merely needing an email address to join.
Sometimes they didn’t even need that because entire
other guilds wholesale merged with The Syndicate. Those
were challenging times but as player expectations were
low back in those days, we were able to weather that
storm. Now, 18 years later, we look back on those
mistakes as opportunities we were fortunate to have as
they helped shape us into what we are today.

We have watched as over 66,000,000 other communities
have risen and fallen during that same time. We
weathered the storms of criticism that you can’t be a
“large” guild yet still be unified and friends. We have
overcome the challenges of seeing entire gaming
universes, that players dedicated years of their time
to, get shut down and having to migrate communities of
people to new worlds without falling apart.

While there are other successful, fun loving and friend
focused communities in the online gaming space, The
Syndicate is very proud of its unique achievements
within the gaming and community space.

* We created the largest, single guild, annual
conference known as SyndCon. This year will mark the
13th year we have held that event.

* We hold the Guinness World Record for the longest,
continuously operating, online gaming community.

* We have a retention rate that is unrivaled in the
online space. On average, we lose 1-2 people per year.
That is a .08% loss rate or said another way, a 99.92%
retention rate. That metric is key to us because our
people are our reason for existing.

* We have our own studio that does strategy guide
writing and game and hardware consulting and testing.

One of the more interesting things about this
anniversary is that it is the harbinger of change in the
MMORPG universe. As our move into our 19th year as a
community, internally we are growing our future not just
with friends and significant others of our members, but
also from the children of our members as they are now
turning 18 years old (which is a requirement to join).
Internally that means we have a whole new set of
expectations entering into our community. New members
who have only known MMORPGs similar to WoW or EQ or UO
or Rift are heading off to college and expressing their
preferences and expectations and desires within the
community.

Why does that matter? It matters because the MMOs of
the past 18 years were created, in large part, by a
community of developers who knew the world of BBS gaming
via a modem… who played MUDs and MOOs… who, in the more
senior levels, knew gaming before there were computers.
We are just now reaching the point where the future
programmers, designers, producers etc.. are heading off
to college having never known a world without MMORPGS.
Some of the core mechanics and concepts that shaped what
“success” is in the MMORPG world are things they have
never experienced, and that isn’t a bad thing. It means
there is change coming to the MMO space.

Those new developers and new community members have a
vision that grew up and evolved under a different set of
circumstances than those that created Ultima Online.. or
that created The Syndicate for that matter. The future
of gaming and even of gaming communities is going to be
evolving in the next few years. What “success” means to
a game… what a “successful community” means in terms of
the services it offers to its members… are all changing
and evolving even though the future, key influencers
don’t even realize who they are yet or how their vision
is and will change things.

So while The Syndicate turning 18 years old may or may
not be of interest to you, the idea that it is a
harbinger of change coming to the MMO space is one we
should all be watching eagerly over the next few years.
There is a growing chorus within the online community
that there is too much rehashing of the same ideas, same
mechanics, and same ways to ‘win’ a game. Fresh ideas
and the change they bring is an exciting thing to
contemplate. Some of those fresh ideas are coming from
old veterans of the industry such as EQ Next or Shroud
of the Avatar or Star Citizen. However, from here
forward, an increasing number of the fresh ideas will
come from players who never lived in a world where Wing
Commander was a single player game and that was all
anyone knew. Where Utima 1 was a game where a
“walkthrough” was not a website you sent your buddy to
but was a conversation over lunch to try to compare
notes and share your experiences. There are definitely
some exciting times ahead as future developers start
designing without many of the preconceived notions, born
from a time before MMOs, that drive many of our current
day gaming worlds.